The Art of Creativity
by Scarlet Scribe
Summary: A young girl takes her very first plunge into the art world, and learns that with just the right amount of encouragement, she can do anything. Her first ever drawing has a lot more meaning behind it than one would think, and on one particular day, that memory is sparked back to life.


He was never one to sit still.

It was true. His sister was exactly the same way, but in a different light. She was a bouncing wool-clad ball of energy. The little sweater-wearing girl (she was even beginning to knit her own, currently she was wearing one with a tire stuck around a kitten's neck that said "I'm tired!") was one of the unique.

She was the kind of child who could never be instructed to sit still and actually follow the order as commanded without wanting to get up, swing her legs so they thumped against the chair, or poke her head into another's business. There wasn't any bad intention behind it, no, it was an innocent action. As his parents have said numerous times, five was the age of imagination and wonder, and that accurately described his sister's personality with so much likeness it was scary.

She absolutely despised sitting still, but his reason for not taking a liking to it was much different from hers.

Whereas his sister was curious, he fretted. Fretted about simple things, like if someone was standing nearby watching him, or that he would miss something important going on in another room, or that something, just something, was waiting to jump out at him. He didn't like having to sit still because if made him feel vulnerable to anything that could be thrown at him, and it was one of the worst feelings in the world. He wasn't like a lot of five-year olds; he glanced behind himself at all times and was much too paranoid for his own good. It was a fact that had been long since established (Mabel liked to sneak up on him, not to mention stalk him far too often), and it always presented itself to him in situations like these as very unnerving. If anything, he was cathisophobic.

The five-year old pulled at his shirt collar and placed a hand on the hard chair, craning his neck so he could meet his sister's eyes. "Mabel?"

The girl sitting parallel across from him looked up from her notepad, blowing a small strand of russet hair out of her face. "For the last time, what is it, Dipstick?"

"Are you almost done?"

Mabel blew a ferocious raspberry at her brother and gave him an annoyed scowl, a look he didn't even know she was capable of making. His hopes that the excruciating act would be over weren't high in the least, and he watched as she blew like a firecracker. "No, no, no, I told you arting takes time!" she scolded, motioning to her drawing. "Now sit still, I'm almost done with your face!"

The boy sighed and squirmed a bit, the feeling of being imprisoned growing stronger by the second. He proceeded to absentmindedly pick at a Band-Aid on his knee to distract himself from the thought, his mind wandering back to the event that had caused it. He had fallen down while he and Mabel were running around outside days before, and while his mother was applying medicine to the scrape, his sister was making goofy faces for him and cracking jokes to help make him feel better and stop shaking.

A small grunt of exertion emitted from the girl's throat, and Dipper looked up from the sore to see Mabel pulling the notepad closer to her face and squinting at it with such intensity he was surprised it wasn't burning away beneath her very gaze. The tip of her tongue poked out from the corner of her mouth as she glanced back and forth between him and the paper, scribbling away with her blue crayon at the speed of a deranged dog.

"What is it you call this again?" he asked, half out of curiosity, half out of boredom.

"A portrait," she answered without looking up, too engrossed in her work to even conduct the simple action. "Like those things Mom and Daddy have up in the living room."

The small boy blinked. "You mean like that picture of the old guy with the orange nose next to Dad on the wall?"

"Yeah." She shrugged, still passionately scrawling. "I don't know his name, though."

"Is he even related to us?" Dipper asked, scratching idly behind his ear. "We've never met him before."

"Dunno. But one thing's for sure; he has a _lot _of ear hair."

Things became relatively silent once again. For around the umpteenth time, the boy fidgeted in the seat, finding an uncomfortableness in the air he couldn't quite put his finger on. He desperately wanted to see what was taking his sister a long time drawing the so-called portrait. However, every time he tried to ask she put him down with the excuse that it was a surprise and that she was almost done. That proved to be far from true, because every time she said so, another agonizing minute would pass by.

Instead, he found himself asking her the same redundant question again. "Are you almost done _now_, Mabel?"

The girl in question put her finger up, motioning for him to be silent. "Have patience, Dip-Dip." The tip of tongue protruding from her mouth wiggled for a second and she made one last stroke before, like a rocket, she burst up from her seat, grasping the notepad and crayon tightly in her palm.

Caught completely by surprise, the boy jumped in his chair, a small yelp escaping his throat. "W-what?"

Mabel smiled, showing off her newly attached braces. The metal sparkled like diamonds in the light, most definitely not comparing to how animated her eyes looked. Without saying a single word, the five-year old made a dramatic backwards turn, hunched over her newest creation. "Introducing…" she boomed loudly, "the reveal that's gonna put all reveals to shame…what my impatient bro-bro won't stop bugging me about…"

Dipper was so excited that he didn't even retort to her cheeky comment. In fact, he wasn't even sure if he had heard it at all. Every fiber of his being urgently anticipated the artwork's exposure, his curiosity spiking to a dangerously high level.

"…the portrait that's going to completely _smash _all other portraits…"

He found himself literally bouncing in his Velcro sneakers by now. Impatience began to consume him faster than excitement, though, as he realized she was stalling for the dramatic effect. "What, Mabel? What?" he asked a bit too forcefully.

The girl visibly wilted for a moment, but still remained with her back to him. "Okay, okay, fine. Ruin my intro, why don't you?" She flipped around, not with nearly as much gusto as she would have, yet she still had an elegant gleam in her eyes. "Ta-da!" she shouted, thrusting the drawing at his face.

With newly gained permission, his eyes finally laid upon the drawing his sister was holding out in front of him. Upon observation for the first time, his expression was bright as could be, but immediately, it turned to one of puzzlement. He gazed at it for a moment, his head tilting inquisitively to the right as he struggled to comprehend the simple illustration.

"See? Doesn't it look _exactly _like you?" She was positively giddy, overcome with happiness that would put other little girls to shame.

"Uhh…" The boy struggled to speak. "Yeah, it's, it's-"

"I knew I was gifted! Aren't I just an _amazing_ artiste?" She said the last part with flair, twirling so that her long hair spun with her. "That's French toast, I think." She stopped for a moment to look at Dipper, but her smile immediately faded away when she realized he was quite literally _frozen_ in his seat and not saying a single word. "Dip?"

He shook his head madly back and forth before looking back at her, caught in a stupor. "Huh?"

She looked stricken with grief for a moment. "Did, didja like my drawing?" Her voice began to wobble, and the boy knew all too well what was going to come next. "It, it's not bad is it? Oh, it was my first drawing. It…"

In a rapid attempt to lift her spirits and keep her from doing something he so very didn't want to see, Dipper threw his arms out in front of him and tried to console her the best his five-year old self could. "Of course I like it, Mabel!" He took another glance at the drawing, and even though he just about cringed on the inside, on the outside his look was sympathetic. He couldn't bear to see her crumple like that, especially with knowing how fascinated she was with the drawing. It would break her delicate heart.

"It's not bad at all, I was just kind of speechless at how good it was, and…and…" He sighed, "just please don't cry."

Her lower lip trembled for a moment before her stature straightened with newly found faith. "You really do?"

Dipper nodded sincerely, and she beamed at his assertion. It was enough to make him grin again and he watched as she jumped up and down, squealing in delight. "Ooh, I'm just so glad! Thank you thank you _thank you!" _She ran up to her brother and threw herself at him, nearly knocking over his chair in the process. She gave him a tight squeeze and he couldn't help but roll his eyes, although he wasn't annoyed at all.

"Yeah, anytime, sis," he said softly as she began to detach from him. She immediately perked up like a flower afterwards.

"Oh, and that reminds me, I gotta go show Mommy and Daddy!" She gave him another giant grin before running out of the room with the drawing clutched tightly to her chest. "Thanks, Dipper!"

The boy looked down at his feet for a moment, his blood running warm. "Yeah…anytime, Mabel."

…

"Okay, Mister Dippingsauce, sit down here."

"Mabel, what do you want now?" Dipper asked in annoyance, doing as his sister requested and taking a seat on his creaky mattress. The evening sunlight streamed in through the attic's triangular-shaped window, casting an isosceles crest on the floorboards. "If you want me to do flash makeovers with you and Candy and Grenda again, then-"

The girl shot down his thought before he could even finish it. "No, Dipper, don't worry, it's not that. I just want you to sit there and stay still, okay?"

His brow rose in suspicion as he watched his sister skip to her side of the room and reach into her jewel-encrusted duffel bag. She fished around inside it for a second, humming a merry tune to herself, and soon enough withdrew a beat-up looking notepad and a pencil. "Mabel, what are you..?"

The twelve-year old bounded onto her bed, landing in a heap on her side and causing its springs to rasp with disapproval. "Oh, shut up, bed, no one asked for your opinion," she mumbled with discontent. She immediately sat up and smoothed her hair back down. "Ah, there we go, lemme just…" She readjusted herself and grasped the notebook with her left hand and the pencil in her right, staring intently at her brother.

His eyes shifted back and forth, a slick sweat starting to form on his brow. "Why are you staring at me like that, Mabel? It's kind of creepy."

She exhaled and stepped back from her intensive stare to speak to him. "I'm performing an art project on you, and in order for me to do so, you have to stay still, Dipstick," she instructed, tapping the end of the pencil to her forehead. "You can sit still, right?"

Something clicked within him, and he seemed to catch onto her little antics far quicker than she had anticipated. His face lit up with memories and a sly smile spread across his face as soon as he realized what she was doing, and he decided to go along with it. "Yeah, I can try…but that's not going to keep me from asking when you're going to be done."

"Stay still, I'm trying to art," she told him sternly, but eventually she couldn't hold back the turmoil of hearty giggles that began to escape her throat. "Haha, I'm, I'm sorry, Dipper, I just couldn't…" The chuckles kept coming, and she fell back onto the bed.

The boy smiled and stood up to join his sister. He practically collapsed on the bed next to her, joining in on her chuckling episode as well. For a few minutes they were all laughs, before the boy decided to break from it. "Wow that seemed like such a long time ago. I still can't believe you remembered it, Mabel," he exclaimed, propping himself up to face her.

"Well how couldn't I?" She lifted the notepad and opened it up, flipping through its hundreds of doodle-filled pages. She finally reached her destination and pulled the aforementioned page out, staring at it with half-lidded eyes. "Man, I was an amazing artist even back then."

The two stared at the page, lost in old memories. On the paper was a very crudely drawn illustration of a stick figure donning two lazy eyes (and surprisingly, no mouth) with stick limbs and a very wobbly looking physique. At the bottom of the page in child-like handwriting was Dipper's name written with blue crayon, spelled "Dipr".

The girl turned to face him. "Haha, yep. I was definitely a great artist back then. No ifs, ands, or buts about it."

"Heh heh, yeah, you were definitely something," Dipper muttered under his breath, earning him a shove from his sister. "Hey!"

"Don't deny it, I was amazing, bro-bro." They were silent for a moment before something that completely changed the mood of the room spurted from the girl's mouth. "You know, your praise really helped me."

"Huh?" Dipper sat up to face Mabel. "How so?"

"Well…" She twirled a strand of hair around her index finger, "if it wasn't for your liking my drawing, then I'm not sure what would have happened in the long run. You know, with my art career and junk. I would have probably given up, and, you know, not be the amazing person I am today," she explained, releasing the curl from its entwinement.

"You would have quit…just because of what I thought?" Dipper was speechless for a moment, taking in his sister's sudden deep words with wariness. To just now be finding this out was a huge deal to him, and for once, he wasn't exactly sure what to think.

"Well, kinda. I mean, there was a reason I chose to draw you, out of all the other things I could have drawn. Like a duck or something," she said. "You just seemed to be the easiest for some reason, it was like a magic force told me you were the one, and I was all like "okay". But really though, you were like, my first drawing _ever._ And, I dunno, it just holds a special place in my heart and stuff, and if you didn't like it then I probably wouldn't have kept continuing."

This sudden news surprised the boy even more, and he could do no more than stare up into the rafters of the attic, trying to come up with a word to accurately describe his mixed feelings. "Wow."

"Heh heh, dork." Mabel smiled and nudged him in the side. "Sappy, I know, but it's true." The two laid side-by-side for a few more minutes, relishing in the evening sunlight still flooding in from the window for a bit longer. "You know what, Dipper?"

"Yeah, Mabel?" Dipper responded.

"I could probably try drawing Grunkle Stan and it would still turn out awesome."

He snorted. "Yeah, if you actually got him to sit still."

"It probably wouldn't be too hard, I mean, he already lounges around in his underwear when there's no work," Mabel said with an equal snort, this one of disgust.

The boy yawned and made himself more comfortable on the bed. "Yep, you could, and definitely should. But I think that's a task for you to carry out _tomorrow…"_

* * *

A/N: Yay for more fluff! I was inspired by the Gravity Falls short "Mabel's Guide to Art" to write this, and if you haven't watched it, the drawing mentioned in this story is shown. There was also a post on Tumblr that inspired me as well, although I can't post a link.


End file.
